Will the full speed advantages of the future USB 3.0 be negated by the fact the most HD being mass produced are SATA 3? If so, what would you suggest a person do? For performance reasons, I go with eSATA or 1394 for external hard drives.

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The 3 is tied to the Gb/s. Saying SATA 3 without the units after it is confusing and not right. SATA 2 (the second generation spec) operated at 3Gb/s, this is not the same as saying simply SATA 3
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MDMarraOct 2 '09 at 4:06

9 Answers
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Well, I would go with Esata if you can, simply because it would be almost the same as directly plugging a hard drive straight into your machine as a normal hard drive.

USB is universal by name, it is meant for pretty much any and every device you can imagine. Whilst I doubt there would be any big speed issues, there is no point in using it if you can support Esata.

All of this is just based on my experience, can't really say anything for sure as the technology has not yet been released.

The fact is, USB to ethernet adapters work, but a standard ethernet card is faster, usb keyboards work - but most of the time, ps/2 keyboards work more "natively".

At the end of the day USB hard drive works, but you will be converting a perfectly good SATA signal to USB, when esata is basically just connecting a external hard drive directly to the motherboard in the same way as a internal hard drive.

Very well said. To extend your answer - why share the USB bus with other devices when you can mainline directly into the sata connector?
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JL.Nov 9 '10 at 18:23

According to wikipedia eSata standard is still limited to 3Gb/s speed. Do you know if this is still the case? USB 3 is 5Gb/s. If both these are true then surely USB 3 would still be higher throughput.
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Matt HJun 23 '11 at 2:04

One factor to consider is access to SMART data. In all the HDDs I own, SMART data is not accessible over USB. HDD manufacturers will support SMART over USB3 in future. but if you want to check your HDD SMART data now I'd stick with e-SATA.

For HDDs on the market today (April 2011), you can typically use two HDDs per e-SATA connection before maxing out the bandwidth.

Most motherboards come with at least on eSATA port and several USB 2.0 ports these days, so if you can get external devices that support eSATA you are better off. As USB 3.0 is adopted, motherboards will continue to offer eSATA ports alongside USB. So any kit you have now will be at least as capable then as it is now. But there will be a delay before USB 3.0 kit comes through anyway, so the decision as to whether to jump from eSATA to USB 3.0 is not one you need to make now. And by the time you are in a position to decide, the route may be a whole lot more clearer.

Except that SATA is also available in 6Gb/s bandwidth (SATA III) and is usually combined with a USB connector to form eSATAp to provide power (and maybe USB data as well).
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Mircea ChireaJan 2 '11 at 20:21

I don't think this is a fair comparision talking about the standards in general as USB 3 is intended to support many devices and not just hard drives. SATA is only a hard drive standard.

If we are just talking hard drives, we will see how well USB 3 does with the overhead of multiple devices on the bus. None the less, regular hard drives have not even saturated sata2 theoretical throughput, let alone the future standards (single mechanical drives, not raid). So the same drive today on sata2 is going to perform exactly the same on sata3. However, SSD drives are pushing past sataII and will need the new SATA 6gb/s performance. Check out this new drive coming soon (up to 355Mb/s reads): http://www.micron.com/products/real%5Fssd/ssd/client/index

I would not go out of my way to make sure everything was USB 3 on a new setup until it becomes more common place and devices support it. I also do not plan on replacing every external hard drive on usb 2 I have right away, so I don't think it is worth the cost at the beginning. I guess it really depends if you are buying a new computer and you either have very few accessories/external devices or you have many to support. I would weigh the pros/cons of spending the extra cash and what devices you have that could potentially use it.

Whatever your decision, there will always be an expansion card available.

Its all very well talking about SSD's but remember the e in eSata stands for "External". In 5 years from now the general public might be able to afford External SSD's, not at the moment. Another thing to consider is eSata is not host powered. While USB 3 is.
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JL.Nov 9 '10 at 18:25

The USB2 interface has a theoretical max of 480Mbit/s=60Mbyte/s (MB), and in practice rarely faster than 30MB/s, whilst the fast SSD harddrives has about 240MB/s transfer rate, NOT 240Mbit.

I think the only thing actuall differing USB3 from eSATA in practice is power over the same cable, which was mentioned earlier, as this makes USB3 much easier to handle when using portable hardrives and such. Also, the fact that its backwards compatible with USB 2/1 which makes any usb3 unit usable on older systems aswell is a big plus.

Beware you can't install and boot an operation system on USBx hard drive but you CAN install and boot any system on eSATA drive. With eSATA you can use single portable system (even Windows 7 licensing issues aside) in both office and at home without any speed or comfort sacrifice.